Hard Drives Make a Difference in Sound

[Harpy]

Couldn't you use a program like IMDisk to create a ram drive in win 8.1?

[Paul R]

That depends a bit Lee- if you are running Windows on a Mac Mini, then it absolutely is a true Windows environment. If you are running MacOS, then it is a Unix environment.

 

But in any case, unless one is moving to true high end storage gear, everything but RAM is going to be what is called extremely deterministic. That is to say, its performance will depend greatly upon the exact use to which it is put.

 

It may be far slower writing than reading, or perform much better with sequential operations than with random access operations. In any case, I would suspect that for music, the idea is to get the device that is the most quiet, electrically speaking. That does argue against using a RAM disk. Yet we have people that find using a RAM disk provides the best playback sound.

 

In any case, it should not be difficult to boot a Windows machine over the network, which is pretty much the easiest way to run Windows from a RAM disk. VMWare provides some easy ways to do this as well, using network delivered VMs.

 

Or for those wanting to enter the high end in computer terms, something like this might work. Be warned, it is high end in cost as well as performance...

 

xpress — Kove

 

Paul

 

I think I want to wait for someone to post good results to running Server 2012 using a RAM disk. I am leery of this as I don’t like the play from memory option in JRiver 19. I also think the windows environment is a lot different than the Apple mini environment. I don’t think you will be able to dismount the boot drive in windows server 2012 like you do in the Apple world.

[coxhaus]

Ok, I have come up with a test which I think is easy to hear the difference in memory playback and not in JRiver 19. This is a lot like hearing the differences in SATA cables. The CD I am using is Chet Baker Diane. You can start with the first track as it happens on all tracks. Play the first track with and without memory playback. Listen to the dynamics of the horn the air the realness “the emotion”, I know, but to me it is not there when you use playback from memory. The air the dynamics the horn realness is just curtailed by memory playback.

 

PS

Remember no page file in windows for the test.

[Deaf Cat]

PS

Remember no page file in windows for the test.

 

When I run Latencymon I end up with around 5 hard page faults.

I guess this number should be 0, so I can turn page faults off safely?

[coxhaus]

I would look at memory usage in task manager. You need to have free memory. If all your memory is almost in use then I would not turn off paging. I have 4 gig and only run JRiver and my DAC driver. I had 8 gig but 4 gig seems to work just fine.

[Paul R]

If you have any page faults at all, you have at some point, exceeded the available/usable/free/os-dependent memory in your system, and should NOT turn off the page file.

 

Indeed, Windows seems to want to use a page file even when it has absolutely no need to.... so I usually just leave some paging space available on the system.

 

-Paul

[Deaf Cat]

Okay thanks coxhaus,

Have done basic operations, start program, pick and play a few tracks and memory goes up to 20%, I thought this was reasonably high, having no clue about ram usage, tried my day to day pc that is much newer and higher spec and that runs at 45% on tick over, doing nothing! so I'm hovering over the button to switch page files off :-o may set up a disc image before turning it off, just to be safe ;-)

 

EDIT

Okay thanks Paul

won't press the off button, will work on getting the page faults to 0..if at all possible...

 

Cheers

[coxhaus]

How much RAM do you have installed in the machine?

[Deaf Cat]

4GB a little overkill maybe, if only 20% gets used.

 

But I don't understand how much this hard page fault thing may need at some point...

I guess hard page fault means all the ram is used so the pc uses the hdd? but if only 20% is showing as being used...?

 

May need to monitor it for a longer period.

[Harpy]

•Reason for Fault - Result

•Accessing a page that isn’t resident in memory but is on disk in a page file or a mapped file - Allocate a physical page, and read the desired page from disk and into the relevant working set

•Accessing a page that is on the standby or modified list - Transition the page to the relevant process, session, or system working set

•Accessing a demand-zero page - Add a zero-filled page to the relevant working set

•Writing to a copy-on-write page - Make process-private (or session-private) copy of page, and replace original in process or system working set

 

"Page faults can occur for a variety of reasons, as you can see above. Only one of them has to do with reading from the disk. If you try to allocate a block from the heap and the heap manager allocates new pages, then accesses those pages, you'll get a demand-zero page fault. If you try to hook a function in kernel32 by writing to kernel32's pages, you'll get a copy-on-write fault because those pages are silently being copied so your changes don't affect other processes."

 

From a web article.

 

Back in the day I use to put my page file on a 4 gig thumb drive. It was faster than the HD and I think that Vista's Speed Boost was similar, though I think there was a little more to Speed Boost than just putting the page file on it.

[coxhaus]

4GB a little overkill maybe, if only 20% gets used.

 

But I don't understand how much this hard page fault thing may need at some point...

I guess hard page fault means all the ram is used so the pc uses the hdd? but if only 20% is showing as being used...?

 

May need to monitor it for a longer period.

 

If you have 4 gig and only run JRiver it should be safe to run no page file. Just don’t open a lot of apps.

[Mr Free]

it’s funny to read this, many people can buy USB cables, SATA cables ext., for XXXX$ but they can buy memory so the computer works well, I would never even thinking of installing WS2012R2 with less than 8GB, Optimal is 16GB

[coxhaus]

You know I started with 8 gig of RAM and JRiver never used all the RAM. I dropped down to 4 gig which is less heat and processor overhead not that I need it as I am running 3ghz Xeon. I wonder if the sound part of JRiver is really 32 bit. My JRiver never really goes over 3 gig memory wise and is usually less.

[Paul R]

There are faults and then, there are faults. The OP did specify a hard fault, which is almost always used to mean a page in from disk. Therefore, any faults he records (of this type) means disk access. Do not take out the page file.

 

 

-Paul

 

 

•Reason for Fault - Result

•Accessing a page that isn’t resident in memory but is on disk in a page file or a mapped file - Allocate a physical page, and read the desired page from disk and into the relevant working set

•Accessing a page that is on the standby or modified list - Transition the page to the relevant process, session, or system working set

•Accessing a demand-zero page - Add a zero-filled page to the relevant working set

•Writing to a copy-on-write page - Make process-private (or session-private) copy of page, and replace original in process or system working set

 

"Page faults can occur for a variety of reasons, as you can see above. Only one of them has to do with reading from the disk. If you try to allocate a block from the heap and the heap manager allocates new pages, then accesses those pages, you'll get a demand-zero page fault. If you try to hook a function in kernel32 by writing to kernel32's pages, you'll get a copy-on-write fault because those pages are silently being copied so your changes don't affect other processes."

 

From a web article.

 

Back in the day I use to put my page file on a 4 gig thumb drive. It was faster than the HD and I think that Vista's Speed Boost was similar, though I think there was a little more to Speed Boost than just putting the page file on it.

[Paul R]

You have to look at how much is reserved and how much is in "standby" and all that too. Use the Resource Monitor button on the Performance tab of the Task Manager to get a better idea.

 

-Paul

 

 

4GB a little overkill maybe, if only 20% gets used.

 

But I don't understand how much this hard page fault thing may need at some point...

I guess hard page fault means all the ram is used so the pc uses the hdd? but if only 20% is showing as being used...?

 

May need to monitor it for a longer period.

[coxhaus]

Paul 4 gig is going to be enough RAM for running JRiver for music with no page file. I have been doing this since summer. I also run all maintenance and file utilizes etc etc with no problems. I do not run any other large apps.

[Paul R]

I run JRiver on 4gb and have no issues unless I am converting to DSD, at which point I get an occasional blip into page space. Usually when it is transcoding a 24/96 file.

 

I am not comfortable making a flat statement that you do not need a page file with 4gb. In fact, I still see occasional activity on the Windows machine running with 32GB of Ram. It does bit more than run JRiver though.

 

Paul 4 gig is going to be enough RAM for running JRiver for music with no page file. I have been doing this since summer. I also run all maintenance and file utilizes etc etc with no problems. I do not run any other large apps.

[coxhaus]

OK. No general statements. I do not do any converting on the fly but I do run high res but not DSD. If you have a problem with 4 gig just add more RAM. The no page file is a worth while feature.

[Deaf Cat]

You have to look at how much is reserved and how much is in "standby" and all that too. Use the Resource Monitor button on the Performance tab of the Task Manager to get a better idea.

 

-Paul

 

Cheers Paul, will do :-)

[Deaf Cat]

The no page file is a worth while feature.

 

I was up for leaving page faults on, due to the amount of things that have gone wrong this week, but with your above statement I'm still tempted...

 

Ah, I run slimserver, I know, not the norm around here.

But all this tweeking pc stuff still seems to apply, ethernet cables, sata cables, hdd's, services, etc.

I do actual have FLAC files that are compressed to level 4 or 6 I think, ripped long time ago, so decoding does happen on the music pc.

I will check out the performance part that Paul suggests.....

Cheers :-)

[Deaf Cat]

Well sometimes there is a small blip above the 20/22% line on the performance monitor graph, but not often, so viewing this I would think I should be okay to turn page faults off...? (eyes shut fingers crossed)

 

Running Latencymon actually advises what processes had hard page faults, which are:

logitech media server 5

svchost.exe 1

monitored for around five minutes, with track changes stop and starts of the flac tracks that need decodeing,

 

So I guess to be safe I should leave hard page faults on.

 

What would happen to the pc if I tried audio playback without hard page faults, and a fault occured?

 

PS

PC only runs Fidelizer and Slimserver.

[RSB]

SATA 6Gb/s Cable Set

 

this cabe i stronly rekomended,

 

this cabel is that a modified

 

 

pasa66, coxhaus, and everyone - Thanks for the information on SATA cables, and the interesting thread. I'm going to go ahead and order the one from Asus, and see how it sounds.

 

 

Randy

[coxhaus]

Randy, let us know how it works out with the new SATA cable. Hopefully you will hear a positive change.

[Paul R]

What would happen to the pc if I tried audio playback without hard page faults, and a fault occured?

 

Probably nothing unrecoverable or even too drastic. The worst that might happen is a BSOD, forcing you to power cycle the machine.

 

I admit, I would be tempted to try turning off the page file in your position and listen to see what happens. Lee really works hard on getting the absolute best sound from his equipment, and his opinion is always worth listening to.

 

I may be a little more on the side of I don't *ever* want the darn music server to crash or stop working, so I tend to optimize software towards that end as well as for performance and efficiency.

 

-Paul

[Deaf Cat]

I admit, I would be tempted to try turning off the page file in your position and listen to see what happens. Lee really works hard on getting the absolute best sound from his equipment, and his opinion is always worth listening to.

-Paul

 

Oh! :-) My music pc has been tucked back in its cupboard for only a few days now, headless, keyboardless, mouse less, etc with the household brooms, hoover, and loadsa other stuff piled in front/on top, I'll have to wait until my wife is out, so I can turn the cupboard out and put a screen back on it :-o

I'm tempted too!

Cheers